THE  RELIGIOUS  OUTLOOK 


The  Church  and 
Religious  Education 


WILLIAM  DOUGLAS  MACKENZIE  '  ^  i 

President  Hartford  Seminary  Foundation 


COMMITTEE  ON  THE  WAR 
AND  THE  RELIGIOUS  OUTLOOK 

Issued  by 

ASSOCIATION  PRESS 
New  York:  347  Madison  Avenue 
1919 


FOREWORD 


This  booklet  is  one  in  a  series  appearing  from  time  to  time  under  the 
general  heading.  The  Religious  Outlook.  These  publications  are 
being  brought  out  under  the  direction  of  the  Committee  on  the  War  and 
the  Religious  Outlook  in  the  hope  that  they  may  help  to  focus  attention 
on  some  of  the  larger  issues  facing  the  Church  after  the  war. 

The  Committee  on  the  War  and  the  Religious  Outlook  was  constituted, 
while  the  war  was  still  in  progress,  by  the  joint  action  of  the  Federal 
Coimcil  of  the  Churches  of  Christ  in  America  and  the  General  War-Time 
Commission  of  the  Churches  “to  consider  the  state  of  religion  as  affected 
by  the  war,  with  special  reference  to  the  duty  and  opportunity  of  the 
churches,  and  to  prepare  its  findings  for  submission  to  the  churches.” 
Full  reports  of  the  Committee  will  be  submitted  later  in  the  year.  In 
the  meantime  the  present  series  of  booklets,  issued  under  the  auspices  of 
the  Committee,  is  offered  as  a  preliminary  endeavor  to  emphasize  certain 
phases  of  the  task  of  the  Church  that  particularly  challenge  its  attention 
at  the  present  hour. 

Communications  designed  for  the  Committee  may  be  addressed  to  the 
Secretary,  Rev.  Samuel  McCrea  Cavert,  105  East  22nd  Street,  New  York. 


Committee  on  the  War  and  the  Religious  Outlook 


Mrs.  Fred  S.  Bennett 
Prof.  William  Adams  Brown 
Miss  Mabel  Cratty 
Mr.  George  W.  Coleman 
Pres.  W.  H.  P.  Faunce 
Prof.  Harry  Emerson  Fosdick 
Rev.  Charles  W.  Gilkey 
Mr.  Frederick  Harris 
Prof.  W.  E.  Hocking 
Rev.  Samuel  G.  Inman 
Prof.  Charles  M.  Jacobs 
Pres.  Henry  Churchill  King 
Bishop  Walter  R.  Lambuth 
Bishop  Francis  J.  McConnell 


Rev.  Charles  S.  Macfarland 

Pres.  William  Douglas  Mackenzie 

Dean  Shailer  Mathews 

Dr.  John  R.  Mott 

Rev.  Frank  Mason  North 

Dr.  E.  C.  Richardson 

Very  Rev.  Howard  C.  Robbins 

Right  Rev.  Logan  H.  Roots 

Dr.  Robert  E.  Speer 

Rev.  Anson  Phelps  Stokes 

Rev.  James  I.  Vance 

Prof.  Henry  B.  Washburn 

Pres.  Mary  E.  Woolley 

Prof.  Henry  B.  Wright 


Copyrlglit,  1919.  by  William  Douglas  Macienile 


OUTLINE 


I.  Education  as  Essential  to  the  Spread 
OF  Christianity 

II.  The  Revelations  of  the  World  War 

1.  The  Power  of  Education 

2.  The  Church  as  Christian  Educator 

a.  Non-Christian  Basis  of  Civilization. 

b.  Human  Nature  as  Revealed  in  the 

Soldier. 

c.  The  Soldier’s  Ignorance  of  Chris¬ 

tianity. 

d.  The  Resulting  Challenge  to  the 

Church. 

III.  The  Teaching  Function  of  the  Church 

1.  The  Persons  to  Be  Instructed 

a.  The  Church  and  the  Children. 

b.  The  Church  and  Young  People. 
(The  Rivalry  of  Secular  Education.) 

c.  The  Church  and  the  Education  of 

Adults. 

2.  The  Materials  of  Religious  Education 

3.  Religious  Education  as  a  Profession 

3 


IV.  The  Present  State  of  Religious  Educa¬ 

tion  IN  America 

1.  The  Various  Agencies  for  Religious  Edu¬ 

cation 

2.  Possibility  of  More  Complete  Coordina¬ 

tion  and  Cooperation 

V.  Religious  Education  as  the  Fountain 

Head  of  History 

1.  As  to  the  State 

2.  As  to  the  Church 

Appendix 


4 


THE  CHURCH  AND  RELIGIOUS 
EDUCATION 

Education  as  Essential  to  the  Spread  of 

Christianity 

If  the  Church  of  Christ  is  to  win  the  world 
it  must  make  a  program  of  Christian  Educa¬ 
tion  and  carry  it  out  over  the  whole  earth.  All 
the  higher  religions  depend  in  a  large  measure 
upon  the  intellectual  element  in  our  nature; 
they  all  stimulate  the  emotional  life  by  the 
measure  of  truth  which  they  reveal  to  the  mind 
and  conscience  of  men.  But  of  only  one 
religion  is  it  true  to  say  that  it  cannot  fulfil 
itself  in  the  life  of  human  beings  without  aim¬ 
ing  deliberately  at  universal  education.  Of 
Christianity  alone  can  it  be  said  that  it  addresses 
itself  to  the  whole  personality  of  every  indi¬ 
vidual.  Its  full  meaning  and  power  cannot 
be  discovered  when  the  individual  becomes 
content  with  any  definite  measure  either  of 
knowledge  or  character.  Every  true  Christian 
habitually  looks  and  presses  toward  the  un¬ 
measured,  the  infinite,  as  his  goal.  Hence  the 
Christian  Church  must  always  feel  that  its  end 
is  unattained  as  long  as  any  ])eople  in  the  world 
are  left  ignorant  of  the  fullness  of  the  truth 
which  it  proclaims  and  of  the  demands  which 
it  makes  uj)on  the  individual  conscience,  in¬ 
telligence  and  will,  and  upon  the  national  life  as 
a  whole. 

The  Christian  religion,  })y  its  very  nature, 

5 


presents  a  more  or  less  definite  view  of  God 
and  the  universe;  of  man  and  his  history;  of 
duty,  its  nature  and  authority.  This  it  does 
even  when  it  addresses  children  in  a  Christian 
community  or  the  members  of  a  savage  tribe. 
These  three  elements  of  the  intelligent  life  are 
quickened  in  every  human  being  whenever  the 
Gospel  is  proclaimed, when  its  origin  and  mean¬ 
ing  are  taught,  when  its  demands  are  brought 
to  bear  upon  the  human  will.  It  is  thus  that 
Christianity  stimulates  the  imagination,  the 
conscience,  the  intelligence,  as  well  as  the  emo¬ 
tions  and  the  will  of  all  human  beings.  The 
simplest  presentation  of  it  to  the  simplest  mind 
involves  at  least  the  beginnings  of  these  rich 
elements  of  the  highest  culture — the  Chris¬ 
tian  view  of  the  universe,  of  history,  of  duty, 
of  destiny.  Upon  these  the  ripest  forms  of 
Christian  intelligence  and  character  are  devel¬ 
oped.  They  are  the  bases  of  all  life  and  expe¬ 
rience,  of  all  Christian  thought  and  of  all  Chris¬ 
tian  hope. 

The  task  of  the  Church  in  the  world  cannot, 
therefore,  be  worthily  pictured  unless  we 
include  its  educational  work  in  our  picture. 
The  question  is  not  only,  How  many  souls  have 
been  saved?  We  must  also  ask,  What  has 
Christianity  made  of  Christendom?  Earnestly 
we  must  ask,  fearlessly  we  must  answer  that 
second  question.  And  our  answer  both  as  to 
success  and  failure  will  reveal  the  measure  in 
which  the  Church  has  conceived  of,  attended 

6 


to,  and  carried  out  the  task  of  Christian  Edu¬ 
cation  . 

The  Revelations  op  the  World  War 

The  great  historic  convulsion  which  we  now 
speak  of  as  the  World  War  has  stimulated 
human  mtelligence  already  over  the  whole 
earth  to  an  amazing  degree.  It  has  compelled 
every  important  institution  in  the  world  to 
consider  afresh  its  own  meaning,  its  own  possi¬ 
bilities,  its  own  influence  in  the  almost  universal 
reconstruction  of  society  which  proceeds  so 
rapidly  before  our  very  eyes.  The  Church  of 
Christ  is  involved  in  this  truly  sublime,  al¬ 
though  startling,  process  of  self-criticism  and 
rededication.  Significantly  enough,  Christian 
men  are  compelled  to  engage  in  this  self-criti¬ 
cism  most  earnestly  in  those  parts  of  the  world 
where  the  Church  has  existed  for  centuries 
and  where  the  present  situation  reveals  the 
extent  at  once  of  its  failure  and  of  its  success. 

1 .  The  Power  of  Education 

For  our  present  purpose  it  must  be  noted  that 
everywhere  in  Europe  and  America  thought¬ 
ful  people  are  roused  to  a  fresh  estimate  of  the 
extraordinary  meaning  and  power  of  the  process 
of  education  itself.  It  has  been  pointed  out 
by  Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd  that  the  world  is  pre¬ 
sented,  in  the  cases  of  Japan  and  Germany, 
with  two  concrete  examples  of  the  enormous 

7 


influence  which  can  be  exerted  in  a  brief  space 
of  time  upon  the  fundamental  character,  the 
general  policy  and,  therefore,  the  immediate 
history  of  a  whole  nation  by  the  instrument 
of  education .  In  each  of  these  countries  during 
the  last  fifty  years  a  revolution  of  character  has 
been  wrought  by  the  establishment  of  the  public 
school  system,  through  which  generation  after 
generation  of  children  and  young  people  have 
passed  under  the  direct  dominance  of  the  State. 
In  each  of  these  cases  the  State  has  enjoined  and 
secured  that  the  process  of  teaching  from  the 
lowest  to  the  highest  grades  should  be  character¬ 
ized  by  definite  interpretations  of  the  history, 
character,  and  policy  of  its  nation.  Patriotism 
has  been  instilled  in  terms  of  the  dominant  pol¬ 
icies  of  the  government  of  the  day.  It  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  the  German  people  have 
been  fundamentally  transformed  during  that 
period,  not  merely  by  the  influence  of  the  press, 
and  the  legislative  policies  of  the  imperial  govern¬ 
ment,  not  merely  by  the  creation  of  armies  and 
the  establishment  of  a  military  organization 
throughout  the  whole  range  of  the  empire — but 
also  by  the  process  of  education  which  drew  the 
rising  generation  into  deep  personal  sympathy 
with  the  outlook,  methods,  and  aims  of  that 
government. 

The  world  has  now  before  it  in  vivid  and 
astonishing  reality  the  most  complete  illus¬ 
tration  which  can  be  imagined  of  the  power  of 
education  when  it  is  unified  in  spirit,  drastic 

8 


in  method,  and  persistent  in  the  firmness  of  its 
prolonged  fulfilment. 

2.  The  Church  as  Christian  Educator 

When  we  come  to  ask  what  definite  facts  are 
presented  to  the  Church  regarding  its  work  in 
Europe  and  America  considered  from  the  edu¬ 
cational  point  of  view,  the  following  facts  must 
be  stated: 

a.  There  has  arisen — and  the  world  is  witness 
of  it — a  struggle  between  the  Christian  and 
non-Christian  view  of  the  State.  It  would  be 
untrue  to  say  that  the  non-Christian  view  of  the 
State  is  limited  to  Bolshevism  or  any  other 
political  movement  which  is  avowedly  anti- 
ecclesiastical  .  It  is  true  to  say  that  in  no  country 
of  Christendom  have  the  national  government 
and  the  industrial, commercial,  and  social  organ¬ 
izations  been  thoroughly  consonant  with  the 
Christian  spirit — realizing  the  fundamental  ethi¬ 
cal  principles  which  are  revealed  in  the  Gospel 
of  Jesus  Christ .  The  struggle  in  which  Christen  - 
dom  now  finds  itself  engrossed  is  a  revelation 
both  of  the  success  and  of  the  failure  of  the 
Church  of  Christ  to  make  Europe  and  America 
truly  Christian,  even  in  their  view  of  national 
life.  The  Church  has  not  trained  these  nations 
to  be  Christian. 

Success  must  be  asserted  in  so  far  as  nations 
have  arisen  whose  avowed  purposes  in  winning 
the  war  have  been  to  maintain  standards  of 


9 


national  character  and  policy  which  were  un¬ 
known  to  the  ancient  world  but  which  it  is 
now  insisted  must  become  the  adopted  ideals  of 
all  governments.  In  so  far  as  these  Christian 
ideals  have  illuminated  the  conscience  and  won 
the  confidence  of  any  great  governments  of  the 
world,  they  are  evidences  of  the  success  of  the 
Church’s  work  in  that  field. 

On  the  other  hand,  failure  must  be  confessed 
in  so  far  as  false  principles  have  been  openly 
allowed, defended,  and  enforced  by  governments 
and  armies  in  any  part  of  Christendom.  To 
that  extent  it  must  be  confessed  that  where  the 
Church  has  had  no  rival  religion  to  contend  with , 
where  its  witness  has  been  borne  among  people 
nominally  attached  to  its  system  of  life,  it  has 
thus  disastrously  failed  to  enlighten  the  under¬ 
standing  and  conscience,  and  failed  to  secure 
that  the  Spirit  of  Christ  shall  control  the  policy 
or  will  of  the  governments  and  the  people. 

b.  It  is  necessary  very  briefly  to  take  note 
of  the  testimony  which  comes  from  all  kinds 
of  witnesses  among  the  vast  armies  engaged  in 
this  war  as  to  the  capacity  of  the  soldier  for 
noble,  moral  action  and  of  his  general  sensi¬ 
tiveness  to  a  religious  appeal  when  it  has  been 
made  wisely,  sincerely,  and  wdth  a  passion  of 
personal  conviction.  That  is  to  say,  wherever 
men  have  admired,  as  all  soldiers  do,  the  quali¬ 
ties  of  courage,  loyalty,  and  kindness,  there  we 
have  the  materials  to  which  the  Christian  appeal 
can  direct  itself  with  great  confidence.  That 

10 


these  impulses  constitute  religion  it  is  foolish 
to  assert.  That  they  are  the  very  stuff  upon 
which  religion  employs  its  powers,  out  of  which 
the  spirit  of  Christ  can  make  the  perfect  man, 
is  the  true  assertion,  and  one  that  fills  all 
thoughtful  men  with  an  illimitable  hope. 

c.  The  most  dismal  revelation  that  confronts 
the  Church  as  the  result  of  its  study  of  the  great 
mass  of  men  assembled  in  the  armies  of  the 
world  is  the  extent  to  which  these  masses  have 
been  found  separated  from  and  even  ignorant 
of  the  Christian  faith.  The  testimony  is  prac¬ 
tically  universal  that  in  all  the  armies  there  was 
to  be  found  an  appalling  range  of  ignorance 
concerning  the  fundamental  truths  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  religion,  concerning  the  claims  of  God  in 
Christ  upon  the  allegiance  of  the  individual 
man,  and  the  meaning  and  value  of  those  reli¬ 
gious  habits  and  practices  which  strengthen 
faith,  inspire  vision,  and  build  up  character.* 

d.  The  revelation  of  the  extent  of  this  igno¬ 
rance  of  Christianity  among  ini labit ants  of 
Christendom  is  itself  a  revelation  of  the  educa¬ 
tional  task  of  the  Church.  That  Church  has 
for  a  thousand  years  occupied  all  parts  of 
Europe;  it  has  presided  over  the  whole  develop¬ 
ment  of  the  European  populations  of  North 
and  South  America.  And  this  is  the  result! 


*For  a  fuller  discussion  of  this  subject  and  the  testimony  of 
chaplains  thereon,  see  the  comprehensive  report  of  the  Com¬ 
mittee  on  the  War  and  the  Religious  Outlook  on  the  Religious 
Outlook  as  Revealed  by  a  Study  of  Religion  in  the  Army. 


Before  us  is  the  picture  of  whole  nations 
where  the  vast  majority  of  the  soldiers  reveal 
their  ignorance  of  the  truths  of  Christianity 
and  their  personal  separation  from  its  faith. 
In  many  of  these  countries  at  this  hour  we  are 
presented  with  a  spectacle  of  millions  of  men 
and  women  engaged  in  wildly  striving  for  a  new 
social  order  in  a  manner  which  reveals  how 
little  they  are  directed  by  the  spirit  of  Christ. 
Their  minds  seem  to  be  too  often  indifferent 
to  that  view  of  God  and  the  universe  which 
springs  from  the  Gospel  of  Christ.  It  is  true 
and  right  to  say  that  these  modern  uprisings 
of  the  workers  and  the  peasants,  these  claims 
made  for  justice  and  liberty,  for  the  “square 
deal”  and  the  merciful  spirit  are  indeed  to 
some  extent  the  products  of  Christianity.  In 
no  part  of  the  world  and  in  no  period  of  history 
which  has  been  uninfluenced  by  the  Church, 
can  such  movements  or  such  a  claim  be  con¬ 
sidered  as  possible.  And  yet  the  very  move¬ 
ments  which  are  the  offspring  of  the  Christian 
spirit  are  carried  on  in  ignorance  of  the 
Christian  truth  and  its  claims.  The  establish¬ 
ment  of  one  set  of  Christian  ideals  is  made  and 
fought  for  in  defiance  of  another  section  of  the 
moral  system  that  we  call  Christian.  It  is  a 
distracted  world.  Christian  principles  are  ap- 
])ealed  to  and  jjromoted  by  an  unchristian 
spirit  and  by  unchristian  methods;  and  that, 
on  continents  where  for  hundreds  of  years  the 
Church  of  Christ  has  had  no  religious  rival; 

12 


wliere  tlie  governments  have,  as  a  rule,  given 
full  opportunity  to  the  Church  to  exercise  all 
its  ministries  and  especially  that  sublime  minis¬ 
try  with  which  we  are  here  concerned — the 
ministry  of  Christian  education . 

Thus  the  educational  task  of  the  Church  is 
presented  to  our  minds  in  a  world  where  its 
failure,  in  spite  of  a  certain  large  measure  of 
success,  must  be  confessed  with  great  humility. 
The  hour  has  struck  for  a  fearless  and  complete 
study  of  the  whole  situation.  The  Church 
must  conceive  more  thoroughly  and  completely 
than  it  has  ever  done  the  work  of  religious  educa¬ 
tion.  It  must  investigate  the  breadth  and 
depth  of  this  work.  It  must  discover  and 
frankly  describe  the  causes  of  its  failure  in  the 
past.  'It  must  concentrate  attention  with  a 
new  and  noble  passion  upon  this  work  for  the 
future. 

The  Te.\ching  Function  of  the  Church 

From  our  preceding  considerations  it  is  clear 
that  a  gigantic  effort  must  be  made  by  all 
leaders  of  all  Churches  to  re-survey  the  work 
of  the  Church  in  the  light  of  that  long  experience 
which  has  come  to  a  great  crisis  in  this  supreme 
hour  of  the  world’s  history.  The  Church  must 
deliberately  set  itself  to  conceive  afresh  its 
position  and  meaning  as  it  confronts  the  rise  of 
international  civilization.  The  very  fact  that 
all  nations  are,  as  we  hope,  being  drawn  into  a 

13 


permanent  alliance  is  a  challenge  to  the  Church 
of  Christ.  With  a  new  sense  of  urgency  it  must 
study  its  position  and  its  responsibility  both 
to  God  and  to  men  in  the  presence  of  a  world 
becoming  unified. 

At  its  rise  the  Church  found  itself  inevitably 
and  naturally  confronted  with  the  work  of 
evangelizing  adults.  Into  every  new  country 
which  it  enters  this  appears  still  as  its  first 
mode  of  operation.  And  even  in  those  coun¬ 
tries  which  we  include  under  the  name  of  Chris¬ 
tendom,  where  vast  masses  of  mature  men  and 
women  live  outside  the  range  of  conscious 
fellowship  with  God,  direct  evangelism  in  every 
form  is  necessary.  The  Church  will  never 
cease  to  feel  its  anxious  responsibility  for  the 
winning  of  grown  men  and  women  to  the  faith 
of  Jesus  Christ.  But  wherever  a  Christian 
community  begins  to  be  formed  and  wher¬ 
ever  a  national  life  confronts  it,  where  no  other 
religion  than  the  Christian  religion  is  nominally 
in  force,  the  Church  must  face  as  its  fundamen¬ 
tal  work  the  making  of  the  Gospel  effective 
upon  the  character  and  lives  of  human  beings 
by  means  of  what  we  call  the  educational  pro¬ 
cess.  This  process  must  be  studied  m  relation 
to  the  child,  the  youth,  and  the  adult.  In  each 
of  these  stages  it  must  be  studied  in  relation  to 
the  family  and  the  wider  social  environment 
of  the  individual.  It  must  be  studied  also  in 
relation  not  merely  to  the  general  civic  spirit 
and  character  and  the  personal  religious  life  of 

14 


the  individual,  but  in  relation  also  to  the  needs 
of  the  Church  itself  as  a  mighty  organization 
which  can  only  do  its  work  throughout  the 
world  by  means  of  highly  trained  leaders  in 
every  form  of  Church  work.  It  is  only  when  we 
conceive  of  the  Church’s  work  in  this  complete 
way  that  the  vision  arises  before  us  of  a  process 
by  which  the  world  shall  be  literally  soaked  in 
Christianity;  a  world  in  which  Christian  truth 
and  the  might  of  the  Christian  spirit  shall  be 
brought  to  pervade  the  entire  life  of  the  entire 
world  of  men . 

1.  The  Persons  to  Be  Instructed 

a.  We  must  naturally  begin  with  the  educa¬ 
tion  of  the  children,  for  in  the  ultimate  ideal  of 
the  Church’s  influence  in  the  world,  evangelism 
will  always  be  carried  on  by  the  winning  of  the 
child  heart  and  mind  and  will  to  the  love  and 
faith  and  service  of  Christ.  The  question  be¬ 
fore  the  Church  is  how,  as  its  influence  spreads 
through  the  world,  this  truly  sublime  work  is  to 
be  carried  on.  If  we  look  over  the  field  of 
Christendom,  we  shall  find  that  there  are  three 
main  types  of  ideal  and  of  operation  in  respect 
to  this  range  of  work. 

(1)  There  are  certain  countries  where  relig¬ 
ious  instruction  is  universal  and  compulsory  in 
the  public  school  system.  The  State  assumes 
that  its  children  must  be  brought  up  in  the 
Christian  faith  and  assumes  also  that  those 
who  are  appointed  by  the  State  to  carry  on 

15 


the  general  work  of  education  are  qualified 
to  carry  on  religious  instruction,  without  any 
test  being  applied  by  the  Church  itself  as  to 
their  personal  qualifications  for  this  work. 
Perhaps  Germany  may  be  named  as  the  coun¬ 
try  where  this  conception  has  survived  and  been 
enforced  most  consistently,  under  both  the 
Roman  Catholic  and  the  evangelical  systems. 

(2)  In  countries  where  the  State  assumes 
no  responsibility  for  the  religious  instruc¬ 
tion  of  children,  special  schools  have  been 
created  by  various  Christian  denomina¬ 
tions  in  which  the  general  education  of  the 
child  is  carried  on  under  the  supervision  of  the 
Church  or  of  groups  of  Christian  people. 
These  special  Church  schools  receive  their 
illustration  from  many  private  schools  in  Europe 
which  are  of  this  type,  and  in  what  we  call  the 
parochial  schools  of  the  United  States. 

(3)  Where,  as  in  this  country  and  in  France, 
the  public  school  system,  extending  from  the 
primary  department  even  to  the  State  Univer¬ 
sity,  has  been  divorced  completely  from  religious 
education,  efforts  have  been  made  of  many 
different  kinds,  and  on  the  whole  with  very 
indifferent  success,  to  provide  for  the  Christian 
education  of  the  children  and  young  men  and 
women  by  means  of  special  institutions.  These 
include  the  Sunday  schools  of  the  Church,  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  Y.  W.  C.  A.  work  in  the 
cities  and  colleges,  the  biblical  chairs  attached 
to  many  institutions  of  higher  learning.  In 

16 


these  cases  the  effort  has  arisen  from  sincerity 
and  it  is  often  carried  on  with  great  devotion. 
But  it  has  not  succeeded  in  reaching  that 
measure  of  power  which  is  necessary  for  the 
thorough  Christian  education  of  the  children 
and  youth  of  the  land. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  Church, 
especially  in  modern  times,  has  attached  very 
great  importance  to  the  function  of  the  home  in 
the  matter  of  religious  education  of  the  children . 
Where  parents  are  themselves  educated,  pious, 
and  faithful,  their  manner  of  life,  their  example 
in  the  personal  use  of  the  Bible  and  of  Christian 
literature,  their  efforts  to  guide  and  stimulate 
the  interest  of  their  children  in  the  work  of  the 
Church  and  the  Sunday  school  must  be  reck¬ 
oned  among  the  greatest  educational  forces  of 
the  Christian  religion.  Far  more  remains  to 
be  done,  however,  in  arousing  and  in¬ 
structing  parents  as  to  the  manner  in  which 
their  unique  influence  must  be  exercised. 

b.  It  is  one  of  the  most  common  complaints 
made  by  those  interested  in  religious  education 
that  while  it  is  comparatively  easy  to  gather  the 
large  majority  of  the  younger  children  of  the 
land  for  work  in  the  Sunday  schools,  it  is  in¬ 
creasingly  difficult  to  retain  them  during  the 
stages  of  adolescence  and  young  manhood  and 
womanhood.  At  these  stages  of  their  devel¬ 
opment  the  young  people  tend  to  pass  beyond 
the  reach  of  religious  education .  Consequently , 
the  knowledge  and  impressions  received  when 

17 


they  were  children  fadeaway.  Misunderstand¬ 
ings  and  prejudice  occupy  their  minds  and  an 
appalling  proportion  of  them  become  separated 
in  interest  from  the  Christian  faith. 

Manifestly,  the  Church  will  never  be  able 
to  saturate  national  life  with  Christian  prin¬ 
ciples,  and  bring  an  entire  people  into  living 
fellowship  with  God  so  long  as  this  drift  of  the 
boys  and  girls  away  from  the  educational  in¬ 
fluence  of  the  Church  continues  unchecked. 

It  is  a  very  wide  field  over  which  the  Church 
must  work  in  its  effort  to  reach  the  youth. 
Many  agencies  are  already  being  employed  for 
this  purpose,  among  which  we  may  name,  for 
example,  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  the  Y.  W.  C.  A., 
the  Student  Volunteer  Movement,  the  Mis¬ 
sionary  Education  Movement,  tlie  Y.  P.  S.  C.  E. 
and  other  young  people’s  organizations  of  a 
religious  character. 

It  is  at  this  stage  that  the  modern  devel¬ 
opment  of  secular  education  must  be  very 
closely  studied  by  the  Church  in  its  bearing 
upon  the  educational  work  of  the  Church  itself . 
For  the  tendency  at  present  among  the  leading 
nations  is  to  carry  an  authoritative  note  in 
secular  education  further  than  has  been  the 
custom  in  the  past,  and  thus  to  inculcate  a  secu¬ 
lar  spirit.  In  England  the  new  education  act 
proposes  practically  to  compel  attendance  at 
school  even  after  children  have  gone  into 
business  life.  Continuation  schools  will  deal 
with  them  until  they  are  eighteen  years  of  age. 

18 


The  process  of  secular  education  thus  promises  to 
occupy  the  time  and  strength,  the  interest  and 
confidence  of  young  people  to  the  utmost  limit. 
It  proposes  to  arouse  and  concentrate  their 
attention  upon  the  subjects  with  which  they 
are  severally  concerned.  When  those  of  them 
who  are  going  on  to  an  advanced  education 
reach  college  and  university  or  technical 
school,  they  again  find  a  situation  where  their 
interest  and  attention  are  fastened  upon  secu¬ 
lar  and  professional  subjects.  Nowhere  do 
they  find  that  the  religious  point  of  view  is 
deliberately  dealt  with  or  seriously  placed 
in  their  life  by  the  authority  which  they  recog¬ 
nize  as  supreme,  namely,  the  authority  of  the 
State  and  the  general  society.  Nowhere  is  any 
pressure  brought  to  bear  upon  them  by  the  State 
and  society  to  consider  that  the  study  of  the 
religious  life  has  any  relation  to  their  general 
intellectual  preparation  for  personal  careers. 
Nowhere  is  the  authority  of  the  Christian  faith, 
the  urgency  of  the  spiritual  life,  the  bearing 
of  religion  upon  citizenship,  brought  home  to 
them  by  the  government  before  whose  author¬ 
ity  all  citizens  bow. 

The  Church  appears  as  a  rival  claimant  or 
even  as  an  intruder  upon  a  system  of  life  which 
the  State  considers  as  complete  in  itself.  It 
comes  to  the  minds  of  the  young  people  of 
Christendom,  who  are  being  trained  in  the  man¬ 
ner  above  described,  as  a  mere  addendum.  Its 
message  is  a  sentimental  affair  which  has  no  re- 

19 


lation  to  the  matter  of  fact  problems,  duties, 
ambitions,  and  prospects  with  which  the  whole 
pressure  of  general  education  makes  them  so 
deeply  concerned. 

It  is  a  natural  result  of  this  that  an  enormous 
number  of  young  men  and  women  of  all  grades 
of  society  confront  the  problems  of  industry 
and  consider  the  reconstruction  of  society, 
without  any  recognition  of  the  spiritual  life 
of  man,  without  giving  any  place  to  re¬ 
ligion  or  the  voice  of  the  Spirit  of  God.  An 
increasing  hostility  is  to  be  found  in  an  increas¬ 
ing  range  of  educated  human  life  toward  any 
attempt  which  is  made  to  interpret  the 
industrial  and  political  problems  of  the  day  in 
terms  of  the  will  of  God  as  revealed  in  Christ. 

But  the  Church  fails,  Christianity  has  passed 
away  from  the  life  of  man ,  unless  by  some  means 
the  edueational  process  can  be  so  filled  with 
Christian  truth  that  the  situation  above  de¬ 
scribed  shall  be  corrected,  and  man’s  earthly 
life  and  secular  problems  be  interpreted  and 
solved  in  the  light  of  his  spiritual  nature  and 
on  the  basis  of  his  relations  to  God . 

c.  It  has  been  recently  pointed  out  that  the 
Church  has  failed  to  conceive  of  its  work  among 
adults  as  involving  the  continuous  exercise 
of  the  intellectual  life  upon  Christian  truth  and 
duty.  It  is  amazing  to  discover  that  the  work 
of  the  Church  is  done  in  so  haphazard  a  manner 
that  the  citizens  are  left  to  discuss  and  decide  the 
great  problems  of  the  Christian  life  without 

20 


systematic  instruction  from  those  who  are  ap¬ 
pointed  to  be  the  teachers  of  the  Church.  Too 
often  the  attempts  to  give  that  instruction  are 
characterized  by  shallow  thinking,  unmethod¬ 
ical  discussions,  haphazard  and  sentimental 
appeals  rather  than  by  the  steady  illuminating 
of  the  mind.  It  has  been  often  complained 
of,  and  with  justice,  that  a  great  deal  of  the 
preaching  of  today  does  not  meet  the  minds  of 
men  in  such  a  manner  that  those  who  are 
trained  in  the  modern  world  find  themselves 
intelligently  instructed  and  inspired.  The  work 
of  Christianizing  the  world  involves  not  merely 
the  continuous  and  successful  bringing  of  the 
children  into  the  Christian  life  and  the  successful 
instruction  of  the  young  people  in  Christian 
truth  and  its  application,  but  also  the  continuous 
stimulation  of  the  intelligent  life  of  the  grown 
men  and  women  in  relation  to  the  Christian 
ideal. 

2.  The  Materials  of  Religious  Education 

A  complete  survey  of  the  educational  task 
of  the  Church  would  involve  necessarily  an 
account  of  the  various  subjects  or  fields  with 
which  such  instruction  must  be  concerned. 
In  brief,  its  aim  must  be  so  to  teach  Christianity 
that  the  world  of  human  beings  shall  believe 
it  and  live  by  it.  It  is  true  that  this  cannot  be 
done  without  the  work  of  the  Spirit  of  God. 
But  that  is  what  He  is  for.  His  presence  and 
power  are  guaranteed  wherever  that  aim  is 

21 


pursued  with  relentless  vigor  and  pure  intent 
and  methods  of  true  wisdom.  Christianity  is 
a  way  of  living  with  God  and  our  fellowmen 
which  has  been  realized,  described,  and  made 
possible  by  Jesus  Christ.  It  can  be  taught  rightly 
only  when  it  is  so  taught  that  men  see  in  it  the 
very  will  of  God  concerning  the  character  and 
destiny  of  humankind.  It  must  be  presented 
as  the  one  interpretation  of  the  meaning  of  life 
which  has  the  authority  of  God  Himself,  the 
Creator  and  Lord  of  our  world  and  our  existence. 

This  teaching  must  be  adapted  to  every 
grade  of  intelligence,  and  made  convincing  to 
the  honest  heart  and  the  ripest  mind.  It  is  a 
view  of  the  world,  a  range  of  experience,  a 
system  of  life,  a  picture  of  the  destiny  of  man 
which  can  win  the  world  only  if  it  is  presented 
steadily  by  a  community  of  people  who  live 
by  it.  Their  character,  intelligence,  and  spirit, 
their  w^ay  of  living  as  well  as  their  words,  must  be 
able  to  convince  the  conscience  and  assure  the 
minds  of  all  that  here,  in  Christianity,  God  is  at 
work  to  fulfil  His  purpose  in  the  creation  and 
redemption  of  the  race. 

When  the  Christian  community  sets  itself 
in  this  spirit  and  with  passionate  conviction 
to  educate  the  world,  its  work  will  have  to  be 
conceived  in  the  broadest  and  most  powerful 
manner.  Christianity  cannot  be  taught  with¬ 
out  the  study  of  its  Holy  Scriptures.  Of  that  so 
much  has  been  written  that  we  need  not  enlarge 
on  it  here. 


22 


Christianity  cannot  be  taught,  even  to  young 
children,  without  a  description  of  the  nature, 
formation,  and  history  of  the  Church,  as  the 
organization  of  the  Christian  community.  The 
diflBculties  here  are  immense.  But  many  of 
them  will  disappear  when  the  various  sections 
of  the  Church  set  themselves  to  do  this  work 
together.  It  is  a  great  defect  of  Christian 
education  in  America  that  it  limits  itself  almost 
exclusively  to  the  Bible.  The  young  mind  is  left 
to  make  for  itself  living  connection  between 
the  Bible  and  the  organized  life  of  today  in 
Church  and  State,  with  disastrous  results. 

Christianity  cannot  be  taught,  even  to  young 
children,  without  presenting  a  certain  view  of 
the  universe.  It  is  a  view  which  is  incompat¬ 
ible  with  certain  other  theories.  To  speak  of 
God  at  all  is  to  antagonize  atheism  and  agnos¬ 
ticism.  To  speak  of  Christ  at  all  is  to  speak 
of  the  eternal  life  and  to  inculcate  views  of 
human  nature  in  its  moral  and  spiritual  struc¬ 
ture,  against  which  various  hostile  philosophies 
dash  their  intermittent  waves.  In  the  later 
years  of  youth  this  involves  a  deliberate  dealing 
with  the  “evidences  of  Christianity”  and  with 
the  fundamental  truths  of  the  Gospel,  over 
against  the  current  forms  of  antagonism. 

Christianity  cannot  be  taught,  even  to  young 
children,  without  throwing  the  light  of  God’s 
will  upon  the  field  of  practical  life.  The  con¬ 
science  has  to  be  enlightened,  the  will  to  be 
determined,  the  emotions  to  be  stirred  by  the 

23 


authoritative  announcement  of  the  laws  of 
God  and  the  infusion  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ, 
in  the  directing  of  conduct  and  the  molding 
of  those  ideals  of  personal  life  which  consti¬ 
tute  the  Christian  character. 

Christianity  cannot  be  taught  to  young  men 
and  women  without  describing  to  them  the 
obligations  which  are  laid  upon  them  as  mem¬ 
bers  at  once  of  the  State,  which  claims  from 
them  a  noble  citizenship,  and  of  the  Church, 
which  claims  their  devotion  to  the  spread  and 
the  upbuilding  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  As 
members  of  the  State  they  need  to  learn  how 
deeply  the  ethical  principles  of  the  Gospel 
should  penetrate  the  social  institutions  and  the 
political,  industrial,  and  commercial  life  of 
mankind.  As  members  of  the  Church  they 
should  learn  how  deeply  their  confession  of 
Christ  and  union  with  His  community  pledges 
them,  not  simply  to  its  support  as  an  organi¬ 
zation,  but  to  the  constant  and  fearless  exercise 
of  its  moral  ideas  and  principles,  its  brotherly 
love  and  self-sacrifice  in  all  the  relations  of  life. 

Thus  largely  conceived  the  educational  work 
of  the  Church  challenges  us  at  once  by  its 
magnificence  of  scope,  its  sacredness  of  mean¬ 
ing,  its  immeasurable  power  over  the  history  of 
man . 

3.  Religious  Education  as  a  Profession 

It  is  manifest  that  the  educational  work  of 
the  Church  must  include  the  training  of  men 

24 


and  women  for  all  the  operations  of  the  Church 
as  a  national  and  world  organization.  In  our 
day  we  conceive  of  the  ministry  of  Christ  as 
being  carried  on  in  multiplied  forms.  Every¬ 
where  the  ultimate  aim  of  all  Christian  ministers 
is  the  same — on  the  one  hand  to  bring  men  and 
women  into  real  and  ever  fuller  fellowship  with 
God  in  Jesus  Christ,  and  on  the  other  to  render 
helpful  service  to  every  form  of  human  afflic¬ 
tion,  and  to  the  building  up  of  a  Christian 
civilization.  But  each  form  of  Christian  ser¬ 
vice  deals  with  a  specific  method  for  pursuing 
and  realizing  those  ends.  The  more  complex 
these  methods  become,  and  the  more  varied  the 
operations  of  the  Church  in  projecting  the 
spirit  of  Christ  into  the  mind,  heart,  and  life  of 
the  world,  the  greater  is  the  call  for  the  profes¬ 
sional  training  of  expert  workers.  Here  again 
the  Church  has  as  yet  poorly  conceived  of  its 
task  both  as  to  the  ideal  and  as  to  the  method 
of  its  fulfilment.  Today,  in  a  new  world 
arising  before  our  eyes,  professional  and  tech¬ 
nical  efficiency  is  the  first  cry  that  strikes  upon 
our  ear  in  literally  every  form  of  discussion  and 
every  organized  movement  which  are  con¬ 
cerned  with  the  temporal  interests  of  men .  The 
Church  must  not  lose  its  glorious  heritage  and 
fail  of  its  divine  task  by  neglect  of  this  funda¬ 
mental  ideal.  Here,  if  anywhere,  it  must  give 
itself  to  a  deeper  consideration  of  its  respon¬ 
sibility  and  opportunity.  We  need  a  world 
filled  with  men  and  women  who  are  working 


in  every  department  of  Cliiircli  oj)eration  as 
those  who  are  thoroughly  trained  for  their 
office  and  are  filled  with  the  spirit  of  its  par¬ 
ticular  meaning  and  value. 

This  applies  of  course  to  the  training  of  the 
ordained  minister,  but  no  less  truly  does  it  ap- 
ply  to  the  training  for  every  other  kind  of 
Christian  service  which  the  complex  life  of  the 
world  draws  forth  from  the  heart  of  the  Church. 

The  Present  State  of  Religious  Education 

IN  America 

In  an  appendix  is  printed  a  partial  and 
unclassified  list  of  the  institutions  which  are 
connected  directly  or  indirectly  with  the  field 
of  religious  education  in  the  United  States  of 
America.  A  thorough  survey  of  the  field, 
methods,  and  educational  standards  of  all  these 
agencies  ought  to  be  undertaken  immediately 
by  an  independent  and  competent  body  of 
men  and  women.  Here  we  can  only  in  brief 
manner  indicate  the  work  which  such  a  com¬ 
mission  would  have  to  undertake.* 

In  the  first  place,  we  need  a  careful  class¬ 
ification  of  these  institutions  in  order  that  we 
may  see  what  fields  have  been  entered  upon  and 


*A  special  sub-committee  lias  been  appointed  by  the  Committee 
on  the  W^ar  and  the  Religious  Outlook  to  make  a  more  compre¬ 
hensive  study  of  the  educational  task  of  the  Churches.  It  is  now 
preparing  a  report  on  the  Teaching  Work  of  the  Church  in  the 
Light  of  the  Present  Situation. 

26 


wliat  fields  are  being  neglected.  Two  main 
divisions  would  evidently  come  before  us.  First, 
those  agencies  which  deal  with  general  religious 
education  for  its  own  sake.  Second,  those 
agencies  which  have  been  created  to  carry  on 
the  training  of  the  various  classes  of  Christian 
workers  at  home  or  abroad.  Such  a  division 
of  the  field  would  open  up  in  this  way : 

General  Education.  This  must  comprise  all 
the  work  done  in  the  name  of  the  Church 
and  its  boards,  by  the  Sunday  schools, 
and  the  denominational  schools  and  col¬ 
leges.  It  is  stimulated  and  superintended  by 

(1)  the  strictly  denominational  agencies  and 

(2)  inter-denominational  agencies  such  as  the 
International  Sunday  School  Association,  the 
American  Sunday  School  Union,  the  Missionary 
Education  Movement,  the  Student  Volunteer 
Movement,  and  others. 

Professional  Education.  This  field  will  in¬ 
clude  all  those  church  agencies  and  institu¬ 
tions  which  are  engaged  in  the  specific  work  of 
training  young  men  and  women  for  the  various 
forms  of  ministry  in  the  modern  Church.  These 
have  been  multiplied  with  great  rapidity  during 
the  last  thirty  years.  Here,  too,  we  must  dis¬ 
tinguish.  First,  there  are  the  strictly  denomina¬ 
tional  institutions.  These  include  the  ma¬ 
jority  of  theological  seminaries  and  a  con¬ 
siderable  number  of  so-called  “training  schools” 
for  lay  service.  Next,  there  are  the  interde¬ 
nominational  agencies,  comprising  many  theo- 

27 


logical  seminaries,  the  colleges  of  the  Young 
Men’s  and  Young  Women’s  Christian  Associa¬ 
tions,  the  Board  of  Missionary  Preparation, 
and  others. 

In  a  class  by  itself  deserves  to  be  placed 
the  Religious  Education  Association,  which 
has  done  so  much  by  its  annual  conventions 
and  its  magazine  to  promote  higher  ideals  of 
religious  education,  to  bring  together  the 
leaders  in  that  work  for  consultation  and  in¬ 
spiration,  and  to  quicken  the  production  of 
valuable  literature  on  the  subject. 

It  is  evident  that  in  addition  to  a  mere 
enumeration  and  classification  of  the  education¬ 
al  activities  of  American  churches  we  need  a 
thorough  study  of  their  aims  and  standards. 
Only  in  this  way  can  we  hope  to  see  both  what 
ought  to  be  done  and  how  best  it  can  be  done. 
Anyone  familiar  with  even  a  part  of  the  field 
must  be  filled  with  hope,  because  so  much 
is  being  attempted,  because  so  many  zealous 
and  able  men  and  women  have  given  their 
lives  to  this  vital  cause.  But  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  work  as  a  whole,  conceived 
of  as  the  effort  of  the  Church  in  America  to 
educate  all  Americans  for  the  Christian  life 
is  woefull}^  inadequate.  Some  of  the  work  is 
extremely  poor  from  the  educational  point  of 
view.  Some  of  it  lacks  spiritual  fervor,  with¬ 
out  which  it  cannot  win  the  heart  of  the  world. 

If  anyone  looks  upon  the  work  of  religious 

28 


education  in  America  as  one  work,  done  in  the 
name  of  one  faith  to  produce  one  total  result 
in  America,  the  present  agencies  must  appear 
almost  ludicrously  inadequate.  Taken  as  a 
whole,  they  lack  coordination  and  pursue  their 
various  ways  with  little  help  from  each  other. 
No  one  looking  at  the  whole  thing  would 
conceive  it  as  a  united,  living,  powerful, 
deliberately  planned  process.  There  must  be 
most  serious  effort  to  secure  coordination  and 
cooperation.  The  common  vision  of  the  whole 
must  inspire  each  part.  Each  part  must  be 
brought  to  the  test  of  adequate  standards, 
both  intellectual  and  spiritual,  if  the  Church 
of  Christ  is,  by  the  deep  vital  process  of  ed¬ 
ucation,  to  fill  America  with  the  truth  and  fervor 
of  the  Gospel  and  faith  which  we  call  Christian. 

Religious  Education  as  the  Fountain  Head 

OF  History 

We  have  attempted  in  the  preceding  pages 
to  describe  the  position  of  the  Church  as  an 
educational  institution  in  the  presence  of  the 
immeasureable  changes  which  are  being  wrought 
throughout  the  world  today. 

Let  us  briefly  review  the  situation  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  State  and  of  the  Church 
respectively . 

1 .  As  to  the  State 

The  whole  world,  so  far  as  it  is  civilized  in  anv 

29 


real  measure,  is  confronted,  as  never  before  in  its 
history,  by  the  fact  that  the  process  of  educa¬ 
tion  is  the  only  one  which  deals  with  the  history 
of  man  at  its  fountain  heads.  The  creation  of 
history  must  henceforth  be  found  in  that  work 
of  training  each  rising  generation  for  the 
great  task  of  life.  In  a  world  where  a  human 
career  cannot  be  achieved  without  a  large 
amount  of  real  knowledge,  that  knowledge 
must  be  effectively  conveyed  to  every  child. 

This  fact  has  now  been  seized  with  great 
vigor  by  all  the  well-established  governments 
of  the  world.  They  recognize  two  fundamen¬ 
tal  features  in  the  modern  situation.  ■  First 
is  this,  that  the  whole  fabric  of  modern  civil¬ 
ization  can  only  be  sustained  by  an  educated 
people.  Not  only  must  the  leaders  be  trained, 
more  elaborately  and  thoroughly  than  ever, 
each  for  his  special  task  of  importance,  but 
the  humblest  worker  must  have  at  least  the 
elements  of  education.  The  second  is  this, 
that  the  very  nature  of  a  democratic  govern¬ 
ment  rests  not  merely  on  the  will  but  on  the 
intelligence  of  the  governed.  Only  an  intel¬ 
ligent  consent  can  establish  a  true  authority. 
But  intelligence  means  change;  and  hence  there 
is  much  agitation  and  there  will  be  great 
industrial  and  social  transformations  among  the 
best  educated  nations.  Exactly  there,  how¬ 
ever,  is  to  be  found  the  least  chance  of  sweeping 
anarchy  and  bloody  revolution.  For  educa¬ 
tion  makes  for  the  continuity  as  well  as  the 

30 


efficiency  of  national  governments  and  social 
institutions.  Every  one  of  the  leading  nations 
is  therefore  committed  to  the  great  cause  of 
universal  education.  It  must  be  made  more 
thorough  and  it  must  be  prolonged,  not  merely 
that  every  boy  and  girl  may  have  the  opportu¬ 
nity  for  complete  development,  but  that  each 
nation  may  have  the  fuller  ability  to  take  its 
place  in  the  commerce  and  industry  of  the 
world,  and  that  each  government  may  rest  on 
the  secure  foundation  of  an  intelligent  people. 

It  appears  further  to  be  settled  in  most 
countries  that  the  State  education  shall  be 
purely  secular.  This  arises  from  two  fears; 
first,  that  of  discrimination  among  the  warring 
sections  of  the  Christian  Church,  which  popular 
opinion  will  not  allow;  second,  that  of  submit¬ 
ting  the  development  of  knowledge  to  those 
restraints  of  the  ecclesiastical  mind  which  in 
past  ages  have  proved  themselves  too  often 
to  be  narrow  and  disastrous  to  the  progress  of 
science. 

Nevertheless,  most  great  statesmen  are  aware 
that  education  molds  character  and  that  a 
purely  secular  education  must  and  will  result 
in  the  production  only  of  an  earthly-minded 
generation  whose  ideals  consist  of  the  passionate 
will  to  “get  on,”  and  whose  conception  of  get¬ 
ting  on  is  instilled  only  by  the  prospect  of 
individual  success  in  those  careers  for  which 
they  have  been  trained.  But  moral  idealism, 
that  which  infuses  generosity  and  sacrifice, 

31 


truthfulness  and  love  into  the  heart  of  the  child 
and  thus  into  the  soul  of  a  generation,  cannot 
be  taught  without  religion.  If  we  are  being 
trained  only  to  “get  on”  in  the  world,  and  to 
help  our  country  to  “get  on”  in  competition  with 
others,  how  can  we  be  trained  also  to  live  for 
others  and  to  aim  at  the  brotherhood  of  man.^ 

2.  As  to  the  Church. 

The  two  great  agencies  of  education  stand 
today,  as  never  before,  face  to  face,  the  State 
and  the  Church  of  Christ.  Neither  can  do  its 
work  without  the  other,  and  yet  they  appear 
as  rivals.  No  secular  education  can  raise  up  a 
nation  of  moral  and  spiritual  men  and  women, 
and  no  church  could  be  expected  to  assume  the 
responsibility  for  carrying  on  the  full,  fearless 
development  of  secular  knowledge.  That,  at 
least,  is  the  general  opinion  prevailing  among 
the  leaders  of  the  leading  nations  of  the  world . 
The  supreme  purpose  of  the  Church  must  be  con¬ 
ceived  as  that  of  saturating  the  mind  and  heart 
of  humanity  with  the  truth  of  God  as  that  is 
revealed  for  the  perfecting  of  the  race  in  all 
its  life,  character,  and  development  through 
the  faith  and  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ. 

In  pursuit  of  this  ideal  the  Church  has  hither¬ 
to  considered  its  educational  work  as  being  in  a 
manner  subordinate  to  its  other  two  great 
tasks  of  evangelizing  adults  and  of  influencing 
public  national  movements.  As  to  the  first, 
it  has  been  far  too  content  with  the  event  which  | 


32 


we  call  conversion  and  with  the  formal  reception 
of  converts  into  the  membership  of  the  Christian 
community,  when  its  dealing  with  them  ceased 
to  be  effective.  The  Church  has  further,  es¬ 
pecially  since  the  days  when  it  became  recog¬ 
nized  as  the  religion  of  the  Roman  Empire,  set 
itself  to  deal  with  processes  of  national  life  and 
legislation  directly.  It  has  sought  to  correct 
evils  by  governmental  legislation  and  by  the 
power  of  the  secular  executive  government. 
It  has  sought  political  power  for  its  own  spiritual 
ends. 

It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  too  many, 
even  among  the  Christian  leaders  of  the  Church , 
for  fifteen  hundred  years,  have  conceived  of 
these  two  forms  of  Church  work  as  adequate, 
as  if  the  direction  of  history  and  the  formation 
of  the  ultimate  spiritual  character  of  the  race 
could  be  secured  by  evangelism  thus  definitely 
conceived,  and  by  direct  influence  upon  the 
processes  of  governmental  legislation  and  ad¬ 
ministration.  By  these  two  operations  it  has 
been  hoped  both  to  save  souls  and  to  leaven 
the  whole  mass  of  humanity  with  the  spirit  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

In  the  modern  world  there  has  been  a  gradual 
awakening  of  the  minds  of  Christian  leaders 
to  the  fact  that  the  two  great  methods  just 
described  can  be  wisely  and  effectively  carried 
out  and  the  supreme  purpose  of  Christianity 
achieved  only  by  grasping  thoroughly  the 
educational  task.  And  the  crux  of  the  whole 


.33 


situation  lies  in  the  fact  that  religious  education 
must  be  carried  on,  somehow,  in  the  situation 
created  by  the  establishment  of  universal 
secular  education  by  the  dominating,  or  even 
the  domineering,  authority  of  the  State. 

At  present,  the  Church,  as  we  have  already 
pointed  out,  is  attempting  to  fulfil  its  educa¬ 
tional  task  in  two  ways:  by  the  creation  of 
Church  schools,  including  even  colleges  and 
universities;  and  by  the  introduction,  under 
special  auspices  and  by  extra-academic  agencies, 
of  religious  instruction  in  those  centers  of 
higher  education  where  religious  instruction 
is  excluded  by  the  law  of  the  State.  The 
former  method  suffers  from  the  fact  that  church 
institutions  are  apt  to  lack  the  prestige  as  well 
as  the  financial  resources  of  the  State  institu¬ 
tions.  And  in  America  we  have  singular 
examples,  under  the  pressure  of  that  fact,  of 
non-state  colleges  and  universities  gradually 
abandoning  the  effort  to  make  religious  studies 
compulsory  or  to  create  that  atmosphere  of 
religious  faith  and  devotion  in  which  alone  a 
religious  education  can  be  truly  powerful. 

It  is  the  absence  of  just  such  an  atmos¬ 
phere  which  makes  the  other  method  of  work 
so  hard  and  the  results  as  yet  so  meager.  For 
religious  education  can  never  be  fully  real  as 
long  as  it  appears  as  an  extra,  a  mere  addendum 
to  a  system  which  is  already  conceived  of  as 
complete  for  all  the  purposes  of  life  by  the 
teachers  of  a  school  or  the  directors  of  a  univer- 


34 


sity.  Religion  so  taught  must  inevitably  appear 
to  the  mass  of  the  students,  as  it  appears  to  the 
authorities  themselves,  as  the  intrusion  of  an 
alien  element,  the  challenge  of  a  foreigner. 

The  ideal  could  only  be  reached  if  a  system 
were  established  where,  amid  perfect  freedom  of 
intellectual  development,  the  perfect  authority 
of  the  Christian  faith  w^ere  constantly  and  gen¬ 
uinely  recognized,  where  the  minds  and  hearts  of 
the  students  were  kept  open  always  to  the  joint 
appeals  of  thorough  training  for  a  definite  career 
and  thorough  dedication  to  the  will  of  God — 
in  fact,  to  the  glorious  vision  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  upon  earth. 

It  is  to  the  solution  of  this  problem  that  the 
Church  of  Christ  is  called,  by  that  voice  of 
God  which  speaks  so  loudly  and  clearly  in  the 
history  of  the  present  great  hour.  No  longer 
can  the  task  of  education  be  treated  easily  and 
as  an  aside.  That  process  underlies  all  other 
efforts  that  can  be  conceived  of  and  undertaken 
in  the  lifting  of  the  human  race  Godwards  and 
the  bringing  in  of  His  Kingdom  among  the 
united  nations  of  the  earth.  Evangelism, 
whether  among  children  or  adults,  cannot  be 
carried  on  without  it.  The  vast  work  of  the 
Church  cannot  be  sustained  in  a  manner  to  meet 
the  modern  emergencies  without  a  deeper  and 
fuller  training  of  the  thousands  of  young  men 
and  women  who  are  annually  entering  upon 
its  various  ministries  at  home  and  abroad. 

In  these  days  when  the  various  sections  of 

35 


the  Church  of  Christ  in  America  feel  that  it  is 
possible  to  raise  many  millions  of  dollars  for 
the  promotion  of  the  various  forms  of  Christian 
work  throughout  the  world,  the  insight  and 
statesmanship  of  our  leaders  will  be  tested  by 
the  emphasis  which  they  put  upon  the  several 
departments  of  Christian  service.  For  many 
of  us  a  supreme  test  of  that  insight  and  states¬ 
manship  will  be  found  in  the  place  which  is 
given  to  the  vast  field  of  Christian  education 
which  has  been  described  in  these  pages. 
To  ignore  this  will  be  a  disaster  of  an  immeasure- 
able  kind.  The  very  greatness  of  the  increase 
in  every  other  form  of  service  calls  for  a  deeper 
and  wider  attention  to  this  particular  phase  of 
the  Church’s  work.  Indeed,  as  we  have  re¬ 
peatedly  shown,  no  other  kind  of  Christian 
work  can  exercise  its  true  influence  if  it  is  car¬ 
ried  on  without  attention  to  the  educational 
aspect  of  the  Church’s  responsibility  and  mis¬ 
sion  to  mankind.  The  Church  must  give  its 
genius,  its  statesmanship,  its  divine  vigor  and 
courage,  as  well  as  its  prayers  and  its  money, 
to  this  supreme  task. 


36 


APPENDIX 


Agencies  in  America  for  the  Promotion  of 
Religious  Education  by  the  Protes¬ 
tant  Churches 

(The  following  list  is  unclassified  and  probably 

incomplete.) 

American  Sunday  School  Union 
International  Sunday  School  Association 
International  Sunday  School  Lesson  Committee 
World’s  Sunday  School  Association 
The  Sunday  School  Boards  or  Committees  of 
the  Various  Denominations 
The  Sunday  School  Council 
The  Missionary  Education  Movement 
Young  People’s  Societies  (Christian  Endeavor, 
Ep worth  League,  etc.) 

The  Boards  of  Education  of  the  Various  De¬ 
nominations 

The  Council  of  Church  Boards  of  Education 
Home  Missions  Council 

Candidates’  Committees  of  the  Boards  of 
Foreign  Missions 

The  Foreign  Missions  Conference  of  North 
Ameriea 

Women’s  Boards  of  Missions  (Home  and 
Foreign) 


37 


interchurch  World  Movement 
Young  Men’s  Christian  Association 
Young  Women’s  Christian  Association 
Theological  Seminaries  Association 
Religious  Education  Association 
Board  of  Missionary  Preparation 
National  Education  Association 
The  Student  Volunteer  Movement 
The  Federal  Couneil  of  the  Churches  of  Christ 
in  America 

The  Boy  Scouts  of  America 
The  Woodcraft  League 
The  Girl  Scouts 
The  Campfire  Girls 

The  Playground  and  Recreation  Association  of 
America 

Denominational  Colleges  (where  religious  “at¬ 
mosphere”  and  direct  religious  instruction  are 
prominent) 

Colleges  and  Universities  where 

(1)  Departments  of  Biblical  Literature  or 
Religious  Education  are  established 

(2)  The  College  Y.  M.  C.  A.  is  encouraged  to 
do  educational  work 


38 


I 


i 


I 

I 


i 


'  ■/ 


'•  A  ‘  ^  ■  ■  -rf  - 


k* 


{ 


